PM Cameron has just said that last night there were 6000 police on the streets of London, tonight there will be 16,000. Police reinforcements being called in from all over the country. Parliament is being recalled for Thursday. No mention of troops, water cannon, or curfews being used. He said that sufficient and robust policing is what will be used.

That may be true for now, but unfortunately, it won't be long before the regular use of guns will come into play & then I'm afraid the police will be useless.

That may be true for now, but unfortunately, it won't be long before the regular use of guns will come into play & then I'm afraid the police will be useless.

All officers wear bullet proof vests, and the riot police are armed and also have body armour. The majority of the people carrying out these acts are uneducated, feral, and opportunistic teenagers, whipped into action by mob frenzy. Even they know the penalty for shooting a police Officer. The people with guns can make more money in one day out of drugs than from nights of looting.

It might help if Twitter was voluntarily taken off line for 72 hours, that could take the edge off it.

"Haven't the warnings been there, from as wide a range of people from Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett to Rowan Williams? We are reaping what has been sown over the last three decades of creating a grotesquely unequal society with an ethos of grab as much as you can by any means. A society of looters created with MPs and their expenses, bankers and their bonuses, tax-evading corporations, hacking journalists, bribe-taking police officers, and now a group of alienated kids are seizing their chance. This is not to condone but to understand. Addressing inequality is the only way we can avoid a rerun of these riots.

John McDonnell MP

Labour, Hayes and Harlington

• If this government implements bigoted policies of social exclusion – deliberate creation of unemployment, ending of education maintenance allowance, dumping of Sure Start, attacks on social housing tenancies et al – then a small but violent minority of those excluded may turn to other ways of being noticed. And the huge police cuts mean that the riots are even more difficult to deal with.

"Haven't the warnings been there, from as wide a range of people from Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett to Rowan Williams? We are reaping what has been sown over the last three decades of creating a grotesquely unequal society with an ethos of grab as much as you can by any means. A society of looters created with MPs and their expenses, bankers and their bonuses, tax-evading corporations, hacking journalists, bribe-taking police officers, and now a group of alienated kids are seizing their chance. This is not to condone but to understand. Addressing inequality is the only way we can avoid a rerun of these riots.

John McDonnell MP

Society has always been "grotesquely unequal" but did not affect me during my childhood so why should this have been the reason for this outburst today?
John McDonnell's words to me seem typical of that sprouted by many-many socialists now and years past. So how does John McDonnell propose to address this 'inequality' issue that he's so concerned about. I suspect he will do it in the usual way and pretend to be concerned, say he is concerned, so please vote for me and I will fight the cause. What will actually happen, nothing for to have equality means all are equal and "NO" politicians wants the ordinary public to be equal to them.....but of course you already knew that didn't you. Who do politicians see as equal to them? business men and the money men all those that the politicians love to mix with. So if the ordinary public are not going to have equality with the politicians then the public wont have equality with the business fraternity either. So where does that put us now? exactly where we have always been. So for us normally balanced humans this is not a problem and has never been a problem and hence not an excuse for others to commit anarchy.
So to John McDonnell's words I summarise as just the typical sort of political rhetoric one gets so used to coming from politicians.

Try...If all financial sector intervention is included (e.g. Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds) , the Net debt was £2252.9 billion or 148.9% per cent. This is known as the unadjusted measure of public sector net debt.

The Public sector net borrowing PSNB (annual government borrowing) for 2010/11 was £143.2 billion or 11.7% of GDP..

"...
The fury of the estates is what it is, ugly and uncontrolled. But not unpredictable. Britain has hidden away its social problems for decades, corralled them with a brutal picket of armed men. Growing up in the estates often means never leaving them, unless it's in the back of a police van. In the 1980s, these same problems led to Toxteth. In the '90s, contributed to the Poll Tax riots. And now we have them again - because the problems are not only still there, they're getting worse.
...

But as revolutionaries, we cannot condone attacks on working people, on the innocent. Burning out shops with homes above them, people's transport to work, muggings and the like are an attack on our own and should be resisted as strongly as any other measure from government "austerity" politics, to price-gouging landlords, to bosses intent on stealing our labour. Tonight and for as long as it takes, people should band together to defend themselves when such violence threatens homes and communities."Reality Internet Personality

No, I am not an attorney, and never have been. No apology needed, I'm just rather bemused as to where that came from. I was a Telecommunications Engineer and latterly an IT Teacher in FE.

I also don't agree with censorship, we should have a free press providing they stay within the law etc, but it is becoming increasingly clear that gangs of looters are using Twitter, and the Blackberry network to organise their criminal activity. In which case I think that temporarily taking both sites off the air will help the autorities to deal with the unrest.

It is not the fault of Twitter or Blacberry, it is the fault of the people who are using their systems for this purpose. It probably won't happen, and if it did, they'd simply switch to using mobile phones, but it will be that much more difficult for them. This will die down in time it simply has to, but any measure that hastens that must be a good thing. In this instance it wouldn't be censorship in the usual sense.

What worries me more is that Street Cred means more to these young people than life itself. It's getting to the stage where a yougster won't be able to hold their head up amogst their peers if they haven't torched at least one car. Then there is the gang mentality, our town is harder than your town, we burnt down 10 buildings you only managed 1 etc.

The points Chris made do seem to figure in the mix, and, ultimately, the reasons (when flushed out - the real reasons) must be addressed. But, all the shop looting and property burning, to trash local communities, is not explained by social deprivation but by criminality.It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues

Not too long ago, you where worried about me. Not a riot since I lived here, just plenty of other crimes.

Yes I was, and will be again if any more serious crime happens around your way.

Youngsters interviewed say "You don't respect us, so why should we respect you?" I think it's important to differentiate between what respect means to different groups of people.

To people of our age group, respect means respect for ones parents and elders, respect for law and order, respect for people in authority like teachers and policemen, respect for others possessions, respect for the community.

For youngsters respect means peer adulation, street cred, and ownership of desirable goods. Take a youngster with the latest £150 designer trainers "Hey bruv, respect!" Take a youngster telling an old person to piss off out of the way. "Hey, man, you told him where to get off innit!"

A lot of it is of course poverty driven, but in most cases it is self induced poverty. Youngsters bunk off school because they would rather be hanging around with their mates. Their parents don't care, and the teachers cannot enforce attendance. They leave school with none or little qualifications, and end up unable to get a decent job. By the time they are 20, they know they will never own their own house, or drive a decent car, buy nice clothes, afford good holidays.

They will probably stay on the sink estate that they were brought up on, complete with graffiti, as were their parents, and so will probably be their children. A continuing downward spiral that they have no initiative to break out of.

Youngsters have seen these riots as a method of protest against what they call the "Establishment" who they see as responsible for loss of jobs, NHS cutbacks, Government cuts, taxation, VAT rises, immigration, EMA, and a whole raft of the countries problems. You wouldn't listen to us before they say, well you sure are as hell taking notice now.

But lets be clear. A lot of it is mindless violence for it's own sake. It's much more fun to torch a police station that sit in watching boring telly each night. Especially as you know when wearing a hood you will probably get away with it anyway, even with CCTV. Then of course we have the professional gangs and anachists usingthe situation for their own agendas.

OK, so this time next week there will be thousands of youngsters watching brand new plasma screen TV's, and listening to top range Hi-fi's which they stole and looted. But they still won't have a job or money in their pocket to buy drink or food, so life will continue on for them as normal.

For the rest of us, insurance companies will pay out millions, and premiums will rise as a result. Local landmarks and businesses will have gone forever, politicians will continue to say this is unacceptable, and talk about it, but I don't see that much changing. Some say bring back conscription, well if you take an amateur 18 year old thug, what do you have 2 years later? A professional thug.

I'm actually glad that I'm of the age group where I won't be here in 20 years time.